Introducing the trier univalence neutrality ambivalence (TUNA) database: A picture database differentiating complex attitudes.

Using validated stimulus material is crucial for ensuring research comparability and replicability. However, many databases rely solely on bidimensional valence ratings, ranging from negative to positive. While this material might be appropriate for certain studies, it does not reflect the complexity of attitudes and therefore might hamper the unambiguous interpretation of some study results.

Two roads leading to the same evaluative conditioning effect? Stimulus-response binding versus operant conditioning.

Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in our liking or disliking of a stimulus due to its pairing with other positive or negative stimuli. In addition to stimulus-based mechanisms, recent research has shown that action-based mechanisms can also lead to EC effects. Research, based on action control theories, has shown that pairing a positive or negative action with a neutral stimulus results in EC effects (Stimulus-Response binding).

Survival of the fittest in the pandemic age: Introducing disease-related social Darwinism.

COVID-19 was a harsh reminder that diseases are an aspect of human existence and mortality. It was also a live experiment in the formation and alteration of disease-related attitudes. Not only are these attitudes relevant to an individual's self-protective behavior, but they also seem to be associated with social and political attitudes more broadly.

Is stress colorblind? Exploring endocrine stress responses in intergroup contexts using a virtual reality-based Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-VR).

Are social stress reactions dependent on the group identities of interaction partners? This study explored the role of ethnic context in modulating endocrine stress responses using a virtual reality (VR)-based adaptation of a standardized stress induction protocol, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-VR). Previous research found no clear link between endocrine stress response and ethnic context in the TSST, but conclusions remain limited due to the quasi-experimental nature of manipulating ethnic context in real-life face-to-face interactions. The VR adaptation of the TSST circumvents quasi-experimental limitations and thus provides a first, randomized-controlled investigation of the effects of ethnic context on endocrine stress responses.

Escaping from the meat paradox: How morality and disgust affect meat-related ambivalence.

Meat production and its consumption harm animals, the environment, and human health; nevertheless, many people like to eat meat. If people become aware of this so-called meat paradox, they experience an aversive cognitive conflict. People, therefore, have to eschew meat if they permanently want to resolve this conflict.

How to promote healthy eating in preschool children: Evidence from an associative conditioning procedure with non-food stimuli.

Given the increasing rates and severe consequences of childhood obesity, how to encourage children to eat low-calorie and healthy foods is an important question. Building on evaluative conditioning research, this study investigated how associating fruits and vegetables with positive, non-food stimuli influences preschool children's food choice and consumption. Consistent with this idea, it was found in two experiments that 3- to 6-year-old children's healthy food choice and consumption increased by pairing a healthy food's picture systematically with a positive, non-food image.

Liked for their looks: evaluative conditioning and the generalisation of conditioned attitudes in early childhood.

Recent studies explored whether attitude formation in early childhood can be explained in terms of evaluative conditioning (EC), the change in liking that is due to the pairing of stimuli. This study sought to replicate and extend this line of research by investigating whether and under what conditions preschool children generalise EC effects from conditioned to novel stimuli. Specifically, two experiments were conducted in which 3- to 6-year-old children ( = 139) observed the pairing of two cartoon characters with two positive and negative images.

How relative deprivation increases aggressive behavior: Exploring the moderating roles of resource scarcity, deprivation intensity, and sanctions in a game task.

The present work investigated the influence of experimentally manipulated relative deprivation (RD) on aggressive behavior in a game context. Participants experienced personal RD as the difference between own rewards and the rewards of a fictitious other player. Going beyond previous research, three yet-unexplored moderators of the RD-aggression link were experimentally tested: In Experiment 1 (N = 157), we tested the effect of the scarcity of resources one is deprived of, and the intensity of the RD experience in terms of the magnitude of the disadvantaged comparison.

Frontal ERP slow waves during memory encoding are associated with affective attitude formation.

A neutral stimulus can acquire valence by being paired with a valenced stimulus, leading to a new attitude towards the previously neutral stimulus. There is, however, considerable debate about the mechanisms that underlie this process of affective attitude formation. Therefore, in the present study we employed a single-trial, intentional learning procedure that paired neutral with valenced words while recording ERP activity, and measured subsequent memory and subsequent attitudes for the pre-experimentally neutral words immediately following learning.

The timing-dependent effects of stress-induced cortisol release on evaluative conditioning.

The neuro-physiological response to stress has far-reaching implications for learning and memory processes. Here, we examined whether and how the stress-induced release of cortisol, following the socially-evaluated cold pressor test, influenced the acquisition of preferences in an evaluative conditioning (EC) procedure. We found that when the stressor preceded the evaluation phase, cortisol responders showed decreased evaluative conditioning effects.

Mind the gap between feeling bad and feeling dead: Stress but not death reminders elicit endocrine responses.

Stressors and mortality salience share considerable conceptual overlap. Thus, we examined the impact of a standard mortality salience and a standard stress manipulation on the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis via endocrine measures of stress; a neutral control condition completed the design. The results revealed that stress elicits increased salivary α-amylase and salivary cortisol reactions; however, no endocrine reactions were found in the mortality salience and the control conditions.

Dealing with the meat paradox: Threat leads to moral disengagement from meat consumption.

Meat consumption is conflicted, because meat provides pleasure to many people, but it also causes animals to suffer. This so-called meat paradox elicits discomfort in meat-eaters and they try to reduce their discomfort, for example, by means of moral disengagement. In the present investigation, we tried to scrutinize this process and examine the boundary conditions that increase moral disengagement.

Virtually stressed? A refined virtual reality adaptation of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) induces robust endocrine responses.

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) technology has found its way into nearly all fields of psychology. Previous studies indicated that virtual reality adaptations of the TSST are less potent in stimulating HPA-axis responses, with lower salivary cortisol responses recorded as compared to the in-vivo TSST. (TSST-IV).

Measuring the meat paradox: How ambivalence towards meat influences moral disengagement.

Meat consumption elicits highly ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, it is associated with sensory pleasure and tradition; on the other hand, it is linked to moral, ecological, and health-related issues. This conflict is referred to as the meat paradox and it is hypothesized that people who experience the meat paradox resolve resulting discomfort by moral disengagement.

Evaluative Conditioning and the Development of Attitudes in Early Childhood.

Many attitudes are acquired in early childhood. However, due to a lack of experimental research, little is known about the processes of how they are acquired. Two experiments were therefore conducted with 153 German kindergarten children aged 3-6 years that provide first evidence for childhood attitude formation in terms of evaluative conditioning.

Doing is for feeling.

In 2 experiments we show that preferences can be formed by transfer of valence from an unconditioned stimulus (US) to an action and then from this valence-laden action to a novel conditioned stimulus (CS) even though the US and CS were never presented together. This result expands the approach of intersecting regularities (Hughes, De Houwer, & Perugini, 2016) to yet another realm of evaluative learning. In addition, our approach to evaluative learning suggests theoretical links between the formation of preferences due to actions and general research on action control.

When congruence breeds preference: the influence of selective attention processes on evaluative conditioning.

We investigated in two experiments whether selective attention processes modulate evaluative conditioning (EC). Based on the fact that the typical stimuli in an EC paradigm involve an affect-laden unconditioned stimulus (US) and a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), we started from the assumption that learning might depend in part upon selective attention to the US. Attention to the US was manipulated by including a variant of the Eriksen flanker task in the EC paradigm.

Timeless: A Large Sample Study on the Temporal Robustness of Affective Responses.

Emotion and its effects on other psychological phenomena are frequently studied by presenting emotional pictures for a short amount of time. However, the duration of exposure strongly differs across paradigms. In order to ensure the comparability of affective response elicitation across those paradigms, it is crucial to empirically validate emotional material not only with regard to the affective dimensions valence and arousal, but also with regard to varying presentation times.

Of Caucasians, Asians, and Giraffes: The Influence of Categorization and Target Valence on Social Projection.

Past research has indicated that social projection is moderated by categorization, with more projection onto ingroups than onto outgroups. However, a few studies have reported elevated levels of projection even onto outgroups. In line with recent evidence, we hypothesized that positive target valence is the key feature of conditions that elicit projection onto outgroups.

Dual-task interference in evaluative conditioning: Similarity matters!

Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in liking that are due to the pairing of stimuli. Although the question of whether a secondary task can interfere with the occurrence of EC is of great theoretical relevance, previous research has not obtained a consistent pattern of results. Whereas in some studies EC remains intact under dual-task conditions, in others a secondary task resulted in reduced or diminished EC.

The TAR effect: when the ones who dislike become the ones who are disliked.

Four studies tested whether a source's evaluations of other individuals can recursively transfer to the source, such that people who like others acquire a positive valence, whereas people who dislike others acquire a negative valence (Transfer of Attitudes Recursively; TAR). Experiment 1 provides first evidence for TAR effects, showing recursive transfers of evaluations regardless of whether participants did or did not have prior knowledge about the (dis)liking source. Experiment 2 shows that previously but not subsequently acquired knowledge about targets that were (dis)liked by a source overrode TAR effects in a manner consistent with cognitive balance.

Evaluative conditioning and the awareness issue: assessing contingency awareness with the four-picture recognition test.

An experiment is described that tested the moderating influence of contingency awareness on evaluative conditioning. After participants were conditioned within the picture-picture paradigm, contingency awareness was assessed by means of a recognition test (i.e.

Evaluative conditioning in social psychology: Facts and speculations.

The aim of the present paper is to examine the contribution of evaluative conditioning (EC) to attitude formation theory in social psychology. This aim is pursued on two fronts. First, evaluative conditioning is analysed for its relevance to social psychological research.

Inductive reasoning and judgment interference: experiments on Simpson's paradox.

In a series of experiments on inductive reasoning, participants assessed the relationship between gender, success, and a covariate in a situation akin to Simpson's paradox: Although women were less successful then men according to overall statistics, they actually fared better then men at either of two universities. Understanding trivariate relationships of this kind requires cognitive routines similar to analysis of covariance. Across the first five experiments, however, participants generalized the disadvantage of women at the aggregate level to judgments referring to the different levels of the covariate, even when motivation was high and appropriate mental models were activated.

The pros and cons of temporally near and distant action.

The present research demonstrated that in considering an action, considerations against (con) the action tend to be subordinate to considerations in favor of (pro) the action in that cons are considered only if the level of pros is sufficient, whereas pros are considered independent of the level of cons (Studies 1A and IB). The authors therefore concluded that pros constitute a higher construal level than cons and predict, on the basis of temporal construal processes (Y. Trope & N.